


Looking Through a Window

by DragonBandit



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Halamshiral, M/M, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 02:17:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12925212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonBandit/pseuds/DragonBandit
Summary: Bull and Dorian dance at Halamshiral.Cullen reflects on their relationship.





	Looking Through a Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queeniegalore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queeniegalore/gifts).



The Inquisition causes far more chaos at Halamshiral than intended. In the alcove overlooking the ballroom, next to Cullen, Josephine murmurs urgently to Leliana about damage control. Cullen isn’t involved in the conversation, he usually isn’t if it doesn’t involve troop movements. Even if he did know what to say, he wouldn’t be inclined to. Orlais is too stuffy for Cullen’s liking; he finds it funny that The Inquisition has obviously ruined whatever this event was meant to be. 

Not of course, that the Orlesians are choosing to acknowledge this. The party is in as full swing as it had been before the botched assassination attempt. Typical.

Instead of listening, Cullen leans against the wall. He watches the assorted members of their sorry lot take advantage of the world not falling around their ears for once.

Sera has grabbed one of the surviving elven serving-women and is leading the two of them in a dance more commonly seen in a tavern. Cassandra and Varric dance stiff-backed through a traditional waltz. And in the center of the dancefloor are Dorian and the Iron Bull, completely oblivious to the world around them. 

They’re given a wide berth, like they’re blighted and the other dancers don’t want to catch it. Cullen isn’t an idiot, he can imagine what the low Orlesian mutterings are about. A Qunari and a Tevinter, holding hands where anyone can see them. How scandalous. If they start saying it in trade Cullen won’t hesitate to bash some sense into those empty heads. 

Though Cullen must admit, if just to himself, that to begin with he was in the same boat. For different reasons of course, Cullen doesn't care a naught about whatever the Orlesians are complaining about. Or about a war that was happening several hundred miles away that would have made anyone aware of politics turn their head at the pairing.

No, what had made Cullen pause and want to take Dorian gently by the shoulders and ask him what he was thinking, was the fact that neither he nor Bull seemed to understand how romance worked. 

From Cullen’s admittedly uninformed and unpracticed side, it had seemed like they had fallen in bed together after a night of drinking too much wine. Then, for Maker knows, had decided to keep doing it. 

Cullen had been waiting for it to all fall around their ears, and for the rest of Skyhold to have to deal with the fallout.

Dorian leans into Bull’s chest, his face open and lost and utterly heartstruck. Cullen has to avert his eyes; he feels like he’s intruding. On the other side of the dance floor Cassandra steps heavily on Varric’s foot. 

Dorian is so different, here in the ballroom where anyone and their uncle can see, compared to that first chess game the morning after all of Skyhold had found out. Dorian, awkward and frowning and holding his pieces in a too-tight fist. He’d looked at Cullen with a smirk that hid a deeper emotion under all the layers of sarcasm. Cullen hadn’t said anything that day. But he’d noticed later, in the tavern, the way Bull’s arm wrapped around Dorian’s shoulders when any soldier got a little too close for comfort. 

He still hasn’t said anything, doesn’t really know how to. Doesn’t think it’s any of his business either. 

Bull’s face is less guarded, but if you know what to look for you can see it. The way his remaining eye softens slightly, and the soldier’s tension in his back drains an inch. His hand is on Dorian’s waist--oh, well it was on Dorian’s waist.

He’d tried to talk to Bull about this. In a stammering, embarrassing conversation that Bull had laughed at and obviously not taken seriously. Cullen remembers what he said in the foggy, red-tinged memory of complete and utter mortification. 

He had stood next to Bull after morning practice, under the pretense of sharpening his sword as Bull wrestled with his knee brace. 

“If you hurt him,” Cullen had said, half under his breath, “I will make sure that you don’t have the opportunity to do the same to anyone else again.” 

There had been a long pause. Long enough that Cullen had become intensely aware of the sound of the sharpening stone against his sword, the clicks of Bull setting his brace to order, and the low murmur of the rest of the courtyard who almost certainly had heard every single word of that, dear Maker. 

The flush started on the back of Cullen’s ears and worked it’s way up. 

“Okay, big guy,” Bull had said, just as Cullen was about to stammer out some sort of excuse to leave the conversation. “But you’re going to have to join the line. I’m already at the head of it.”

“Good,” Cullen had said, hadn’t known what else to say. “Good.” Then he’d said something else about proper manners. 

Bull had winked at him. It had been horrifying. 

Even the memory of it, in the ballroom of Halamshiral, heats Cullen’s blood and makes it rise to his face. An Orlesian noble next to him titters behind an intricately painted paper fan. No doubt they’ve assumed it’s a reaction to whatever the conversation around him has turned towards. 

He tells himself again to never let Dorian find out about the conversation. There is only so much teasing a man can take in a lifetime, and this is exactly the sort of thing that Dorian would never, ever, in a million years, let go of. 

Dorian laughs up at Bull. His eyes tilt half closed as Bull dips him far too low to be appropriate. His lips form a word that Cullen can barely make out, “brute,” he thinks. And then another word, in Tevene that Cullen has no chance of making sense of. 

Cullen stops watching. He lets the lovers have their privacy. In the center of the dancefloor, Bull and Dorian waltz. Lost in each other, the rest of the world forgotten. 

* * *

 

Dorian lets Bull spin him. “Is he still watching?” he asks. 

Bull glances up at the balcony, “Yep.” 

“You would think that he would have more sense than to do it so openly,” Dorian laughs. “Do you think I should scold him later?” 

“I got a better idea,” Bull says. He pulls Dorian close, far too close for polite society, and then tosses a cheery wave at their watcher. When Dorian can look up again he finds Cullen’s face a bright, tomato red. 


End file.
